Love + RAge

On September 17, 2011 the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement emerged as a new kind of people-powered social movement revolving around social and economic injustice. The initial home of OWS was Zucotti park,  re-named to Liberty Square, a 24-hour privately owned public space in the heart of the financial district in Lower Manhattan. The Occupy Wall Street movement transformed this space into a radical platform where ideas could be freely exchanged.

The encampment offered a new form of protest by emulating an idealistic community based on mutual aid—fully equipped with a kitchen, a library (with over 5000 books), a medic tent, and a media outpost. The idea was to create a non-hierarchal, transparent, accountable community that made decisions utilizing the tools of direct democracy. People who had never previously engaged in activism found themselves holding signs on their lunch breaks, participating in General Assemblies and carrying out civil political conversation with those on the opposite side of the political spectrum. This new form of protest spread throughout 1500 cities worldwide. Although all the encampments were destroyed, protests and grass roots organizing continues on local, national and global levels.

Occupy Wall Street is an ever changing evolving social movement. A network was created—connecting every day people with long term activists—who were united the by the ideology that greed has manipulated every aspect of our society. Healthcare, education, war, the environment, employment, housing, and the banking industry are a few examples of where profit has taken the center stage to people, and now people are finally taking a stand. 

Living an activist, transient life I emotionally, physically, and financially invested a solid year documenting the Occupy Wall Street movement daily—leading up the one-year anniversary on September 17, 2012. Love + Rage chronicles this unique period of US history; from protests and civil disobedience to the more personal moments, conversations, and comradery that erupted in communities across the country.

I always knew I would live in NYC someday, I just never thought my first address would be in a park around the corner from Wall Street. My life as an embedded photographer within the Occupy Wall Street movement was one wild ride—sensory overload—and an experience that has forever changed me.